Yuan Shu
by Nan Ma
Summary: Historical Fic. Takes place after Yuan Shu's final defeat, when he is forced to flee and go into exile.


Kill me now.

I don't know why you don't. I have every reason for you to do such,

I don't know how history will write me. That's what everyone ever cared about, wasn't it? History? I hate history, both past history and future history. I will tell you something about people- they live for their descendants' past. The annals of history, the legends of time, all of that is only the record, the manifestation, of the future's past. He who looks to the present is called out to be a mindless fool. He who looks to the future is an easily-swayed and of meager talent. But he who lives in the past? He is a considered a wise and excellent gentleman of great merit.

I am not only speaking of the past that has already happened- the rise and fall of kings and emperors, the waxing and waning of dynasties, all coiling and writing like smoke in the air. I speak of that past as well of course. But moreso than that, I speak of the future's past. Do not mistake it for the present, for that is a different thing. I speak of the history of the future, which is what all these fine lords and generals and gentleman, these passing particles of dust and already-decaying compost, live in and for. Their battle cries may carry the blessing of the Han, the will of Heaven, justice, loyalty, or whatever is the fad oath of the week, but their tongues call out, 'for the history of the future!'

And what of the man who thinks that way, for this strange suffocating thing called the future-past? It is a poison that gives him vision and strength beyond all else. It lifts him and throws him… But only for a while. But it takes everything and gives little else. It drugs a man until he cannot be without it. Whereas first he has passion and energy powering his lunges, soon he is struggling and straining with every fiber of his muscle just to crawl an inch. And he needs more and more of it for the same effect, until one day all the future-past in the world cannot nudge him. Then he is lost. Slowly, a man loses sight of everything else.

The future-past is a cruel tyrant. It entices you into its service with gilded trinkets and promises of memorials rising high to the sky past the moon. Then it makes you its blind, deaf slave, wriggling forward and groping around in darkness, burying yourself in its murky sludge until your sense disappear into its depths.

There are conditions for the service of the future-past. They are carved in stone and painted scarlet, but they never appear until a man is too far in to quit. Firstly, bring everything. Sacrifice everything. Burn everything a man possesses on the altar of the history of the future. Brothers, friends, homes, memories, hopes, dreams, everything up to the sunrise on dewdrops. All of it. Secondly, take nothing. A man not is paid; he is granted the bare sustenance needed for his body to function. Thirdly, he is may not consider it his loss.

Even the man who achieves the grand prize in the service of future-past will not have gotten anything.

But what is the value of the future-past? This I cannot be sure of anymore. But everything here, from the gold ingots of the Imperial treasury to the millet that nourishes the mouths of the world to the glimmer of a butterfly's wing… The love of a father for his child, the love of a brother to his friend, the hate of a warrior to his father's murderer… Apparently all these things have little or no value when placed next to the words of the future. Things that have not happened, stories that have not been told, people and events that might never be, and the opinions of scholars in a thousand years, those are the future-past that is so valuable and precious to those in its service.

As the others fight on I fall.

Where I once crossed such powerful men as Dong Zhuo and Liu Biao and even my cousin, where I pointed some of the ablest men in the land across the country with a single command, where I once raised my wine to Gongsun Zan and where I once deplored the wretched world from my highest towers… I have descended far and fallen hard.

I stood on the pinnacle of my crowning glory, Shou Chan, and looked outwards at the land all around. The other lords, each sitting on the roofs of their own towers, all fought each other, hurling insults and pleasant words in almost-equal measure, stones and men as if men and stones.

Then I fell. With one push, I slipped off, my heart barely having time to catch a mouthful of sickness in my throat. I lashed through the air as territories, men, horses, and endless fields of grain and corpses flashed by.

The ground sped towards me. It was the realization, the sudden jolt and shock, the words that had been thrown at me but had never pierced my shield.

I was not great.

The service of the future-past was all that I know it to be now.

_Thud._

Now I am alone. My followers are either ground to dust beneath the hooves of cavalry or have taken up with other lords as tics abandoning a dead dog.

Sitting at the edge of a hut built from the mud and dirt that welcomes every man, I cough into a broken old piece of pottery that serves as my cup and my dish. A thick brown mucus slides up from the depths of my throat to drop with a humble thump into the red dust at my feet, sliding off a piece of cow dung and hay.

The villagers pass. Some of them know of me. Most of them do not. Some look on me fondly. Most ignore me. Another crazy sick man, scrambling in the dust and shelling beans just like the rest of everyone. When I crawled into the village, I had to squint to see it because everything was the same miserably color, a dull brown-gray sort of hue. Even the people were that color. Everything eventually blended together, the clouds and the dirt, the people and the dirt, the houses and the dirt, everything. Every day it gets more difficult to see anything but dust in the village around mean.

I eat two meals a day now, both of old millet diluted in water and beans. My bones are pressed against my skin, but perhaps that is only due to sickness. My hair has gone grimy and fallen out, and I wear one layer of frayed hemp perhaps older than myself.

So what do I have to lose in death? Nothing, I tell you! I lose absolutely nothing now, me, who never had anything in the first place.

I have nothing but dust now, and that dust will never leave me. It will never leave my side, even in death, and it will always be.

It is a comforting thought, actually. The future-past goes on, wringing more and more men into its twisted service.

And what will it give them? Nothing but perhaps and maybes. A glory now that will surely fade, unless the future-past chooses to raise it to the stars. Even then, it will be forgotten. The future-past cannot give anything for sure.

But here, this village can give dust- dust, which is dust and definitely here. This is solid. This is here. This is absolute. This is good.

Some will rise; some will fall. One man will become emperor as millions perish. Nothing is for certain, and nothing truly exists, except for this dirt and this dust.

I call to my old brothers, my enemies, my lords and my underlings- come join me, come sit with me on this doorstep of this half-roofed hut. Come shell beans with me and eat moldy grain and water and wear rags and go barefoot. It is not for any religious austerity, or any Taoist enlightenment, or any spiritual purpose.

It is simply for sitting here and existing, and being with things that exist for sure.

This is more than anything I have ever gotten in all my years in the land.

* * *

This was written as it came. No editing, no rereading, no thinking. Just as it came.

I know I said I wouldn't post anything, much less an unhappy write. But it's the bell jar. That bell jar. That same one. It is different but the same concept and I don't know what.


End file.
